Who
am I? Where do I belong? Who determines my future?
Society has no answer to these restless questions.
Our sense of identity, kinship and community,
are at worst shattered by the experience of migration
and at best are thrown into uncertainty.
The universal declaration of human
rights talks of a world “without distinction
of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national
or social origin, property, birth or other status”.
The reality, particularly for the economic migrant,
is very different.
Physical, emotional, social and
intellectual exclusion reinforce a migrant’s
sense of displacement and alienation. The powerful
may glide over such barriers, touching down for
business, for pleasure or even out of guilt. For
those without power, parting is painful, and each
barrier crossed, like the ferry ghats of the big
rivers, broadens the distance they must travel
to return.
Expectations,
dreams, duties and needs circumscribe the life
of an economic migrant. The single hope, to change
one's destiny, is what ties all migrants together,
whether they be the Bangladeshis who work in the
forests of Malaysia, the bonded labourers in the
sugarcane plantations in India, the construction
workers in the Middle East or the hopeful thousands
bound for the promised lands of Europe and North
America. They see migration not merely as a means
to economic freedom, but also as a passport for
social mobility. The wealthy can purchase the
future they desire. But a migrant who chooses
to rewrite an inherited destiny swims against
the current and faces the wrath of the gatekeepers
who shape that destiny. |
